Handling In-Laws: The Complete Guide By A Counsellor
When a girl is married, she goes through multiple emotions at a time. She is sad to leave her parents and family on one hand and is excited to start a new life on the other. It takes a bit of time to adjust to the new family and their culture.
It takes the efforts of the new bride and the complete family as well to make this gala time everlasting. The blend of Mutual understanding and cooperation together will create a happy and gratified family life.
I remember one such couple who had a love marriage. Rashmi and Laxman had been in love for 9 years.
After lots of struggles and arguments, they convinced their parents and tied the knot around 9 months back.
Rashmi belonged to a very extrovert and frank family and had a nuclear family. She always emphasized women’s empowerment and stood for feminism.
On the other side, Laxman had a large family comprising 19 members. They had their roots from the village and hence were superstitious and narrow-minded.
Thus problems and issues were inevitable. Rashmi didn’t use to interact with the other family members and her mother-in-law. Also, she was less interested in household chores.
Her in-laws could not understand this. There were frequent arguments and lots of differences in opinions amongst them. Every day brought a new controversy with it.
One day when the frustration crossed all its limits, she packed her bags and left the house. Relations between Laxman and Rashmi also started fading slowly. An enormous gap came in their relations and they filed a divorce.
During divorce proceedings, their lawyer suggested they visit a marriage counsellor for marriage counselling.
As they visited me, I first tried to study both the families, their nature and the reason behind the daily conflicts. The only cause of misunderstanding was the difference in the cultures of both families.
As the therapy started, they shared their reasons, problems and solutions. I just advised them to understand each other and interact as much as possible. It is essential to clear whatever comes to your mind. Too many misconceptions become poisonous for one’s relations.
A little sacrifice and adjustments by each one of them can lessen all the complications, and they can live a happy life together.
Within 5 sessions they realized that they loved each other a lot and sorted out all the equations amongst them. Rashmi now had a sweet relation with her in-laws and her husband. As the therapy ended everything became lively and delightful and they started living with cooperation and affection for each other.
Being a marriage counsellor, I felt so pleased and gleeful to unify a family. I’m so lucky and grateful to be able to help you.
What is marital counselling?
Going to visit a marriage counsellor is the best idea if you want to know how to adjust with the in-laws and want to restore your alliance. They often describe it as a couple of therapy that involves both the partners and the families also sometimes. It is done to sort out the differences and make married life happy and resolve all the related issues.
It gives another chance to know each other and make a fresh start again.
What are the most common problems with laws?
Post-marriage life is full of unexpected and unsolicited experiences. Since the dynamics of all the families are different; it takes time and effort on part of everyone to make the marriage workable. It is all about how tightly knit the families are.
As per my experience and the clients I have addressed; some challenges in living with in-laws are:
The pre-decided rules: Every household has its pre-established rules which are being carried forward for centuries. Abide by these rules and follow them as the earlier generations did. You may find them difficult, but you have to.
Privacy matters: the lack of privacy can be quite unnerving for the newlywed bride, who is quite independent these days. Lack of privacy may prove suffocating and irritating to some. Here, both the bride and the family members will have to understand each other’s priorities and adjust a little.
Personal freedom: Nowadays girls want to wear the clothes of their choice, wake up as they want, eat what they like, go out frequently for dining and spend lots of time on social media. This may not be liked by some or other family members. Soon the girl assumes the family as a prison and conflicts become common.
Competition for the same man: According to psychologists, the tension between a wife and mother-in-law results when both start ‘competing’ subconsciously for the affection of the same man. This causes the most problems in marriages. The husband becomes a sandwich between both.
Some of the most useful tips given by the life coach are:
Change your perception: First of all, change your outlook. No one is perfect, all have some minor faults and you have to accept everyone as they are. Everyone has to understand each other and take everything positively. Change in the way you perceive situations and your in-laws themselves marks the starting of good times.
Spending time with each other: spending quality time with each other, eating together, watching movies, going shopping and celebrating festivals together is a very important tool that helps to bind the family together. I believe it is necessary to perform these daily rituals to have a healthy atmosphere in the family. Elderly people expect little from the young except respect, time & some tiny gestures of love.
Complete privacy: I know giving space is very important in every relation, especially to the newlywed. Too much interference makes suffocation and irritation in relations. We must make a perfect between family time and private time.
Know your in-laws before marriage: These pre-wedding preparations help you to better adjust to the new environment. It is very beneficial if you know each other as there will be fewer shocking situations and will also lead to better responses from your side.
Why life coach Ritu Singal?
Marriage is a tricky alliance, and with the expert guidance and therapies of a counsellor, it becomes quite simple and easy to manage.
I have plenty of experience when it comes to marriage counselling making peace with the in-laws; this is because of my personal as well as professional encounters. In my career, I have faced too many cases where either the groom or the bride found it difficult to make the in-laws happy or get a healthy relationship with them. I have my own certain set of proven strategies and approaches to help people with in-laws and make them understand each other very effectively.
If you are facing issues in your married life and the in-laws seem to be too irritating feel free to contact her. I offer a one-stop solution for all the people facing such issues. My knowledge and sense of dealing with people and treating her patients are incomparable.
To conclude, I can just say that; No marriage is like a pie in the sky. It needs sincere efforts and varied kinds of adjustments to make married life happy and prosperous.
Here we’ve summarized 8 Essential Keys to a Successful Marriage. Read here:: https://ritusingal.com/blog/what-matters-most-when-you-want-to-save-a-marriage//
Parental counselling can help you not only understand the emotional needs of the child but also enables you to understand your needs and limitations and healthily address them all.
Being a mother herself, Life Coach Ritu Singal often tells her own experience with her daughter. She says, “When my daughter was young, she used to complain about a lot of things like she doesn’t like her school bus driver, her teacher is not good, etc.”
“As most parents would do, I also used to tell her that things don’t work this way in real life. She has to ‘learn to manage’ things, and she can’t be finding fault with everyone.”
She continues, “After a little while I started getting this kind of response from my daughter – ‘You mean I am at fault?’ or ‘Mom, don’t you trust me?’”
This is when she feels like her daughter is going away from her.
One day, after the parent-teacher meeting, when she saw her waiting, all scared and anxious that now “Mumma is going to scold me,” she knew that this is not the time for scolding or punishments as that changes nothing.
She understood that the responsibility of making her daughter a nice person is her responsibility. The importance of parents’ counselling and guidance was evident to her.
Therefore, instead of rebuke, she said to her daughter, “Your teacher likes you, and she said that you are one of her brilliant students, and if you are a little more careful, you can do wonders.”
This positive feedback made her daughter more receptive and responsive and made her understand what was expected from her.
Ritu’s daughter soon started taking care of her things and became way more organized and alert. Today she is working as a successful senior executive in an MNC.
This personal story has one lesson: making a child emotionally healthy and stable is the parents’ responsibility.
Emotionally disturbed children are more vulnerable to emotional, physical, or even sexual abuse by others.
They exhibit more aggression or go into complete seclusion, sometimes without any apparent reasons. They may shout even when not provoked or be awkwardly quiet even when it is provoking.
This behaviour is challenging for the parents and anyone around them, and people start labelling the child as “unruly,” “dumb,” or “psycho.”
With parent-child relationship counselling, it is possible to gain the lost trust, confidence, and mend broken relationships.
